Seychelles is undergoing its second round of Exchange of Information upon Request review.
July 05, 2019
Thursday 4th July 2019, VICTORIA, SEYCHELLES: The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes is the multilateral framework within which work in the area of tax transparency and exchange of information is carried out by over 130 jurisdictions which participate in the work of the Global Forum on an equal footing.
A delegation from the global forum is on a three day mission conducting an assessment on both legislative and practice, assessing compliance with the new terms of reference for the exchange of information standard.
The Global Forum is charged with in-depth monitoring and peer review of the implementation of the standards of transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes; being the standard of exchange of information on request (EOIR). The ultimate goal of these reviews is to help jurisdictions to effectively implement the international standards of transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes.
Seychelles underwent four Global Forum peer reviews under Round 1 since 2011. A phase 1 (2011), a supplementary phase 1 (2012), a phase 2 (2013) and a supplementary phase 2 (2015). In Round 1, the overall rating was first Non-Compliant with the following individual ratings:
Non- Compliant for Availability of ownership and identity information, availability of Accounting records, Partly Compliant for Exchange-of-information mechanisms and Exchange-of-information (EOI) mechanisms with all relevant partners, Largely Compliant for Timeliness of responses to requests for information and Compliant for the other elements.
Following the last supplementary review, the overall rating became Largely Compliant with the following individual ratings:
Largely Compliant for Availability of ownership and identity information, availability of Accounting records and Timeliness of responses to requests for information while Compliant for the other elements.
The mission is meeting with the Finance department, Seychelles Revenue Commission, Registration Division, Central bank of Seychelles, Attorney General’s Office, Financial Intelligence Unit and the Financial Services Authority as well as some other professionals.